Old Madsen’s Almanack
Some of 2027 is already on the calendar. The rest can be read from trends that are unlikely to reverse. Here are the predictions you might bet on, roughly in order of confidence.
The French presidential election in April and May is the big one. Macron cannot stand. The National Rally, led by Bardella if Le Pen is banned, starts as favourite in the first round. Whether the centre and left can unite behind one candidate for the run-off will decide it. This will be close to a coin toss, which was unthinkable a decade ago. Maybe National Rally to win.
China holds its 21st Party Congress in the autumn. Expect Xi to secure a fourth term and no obvious successor to be named. 2027 is also the year American commanders have flagged as the point when the PLA should be ready to move on Taiwan. Readiness is not intent. A blockade or invasion remains unlikely, but pressure through exercises, grey-zone incursions, and economic coercion will rise.
Elsewhere, Nigeria, Kenya, Argentina, Poland, and Switzerland all vote. Spain and Italy must hold general elections by 2027 at the latest. The pattern across Europe will be the same, with established parties being squeezed by insurgents on the right.
In Britain, May's English local elections will test whether Reform's poll lead converts into councils won. It probably will. The fiscal squeeze will continue, with pressure for further tax rises and little room for spending. In America, a Congress reshaped by the November midterms will set the tone for Trump's final two years, and the 2028 primary field will start forming.
Obesity drugs will keep spreading. Semaglutide patents have expired in several large markets, so cheap generics will flood India, China, Canada, and Brazil. Oral versions and next-generation drugs like retatrutide should widen use further. Prices fall, patients multiply, and the arguments shift from access to cost-effectiveness for health systems.
Gene editing will move from miracle to method. The first bespoke CRISPR treatments for rare infant diseases showed it could be done. Regulators are now building pathways to approve such therapies in batches rather than one by one. Pig-to-human kidney transplants, now in formal trials, may produce the first recipients surviving a year or more.
Twice-yearly HIV prevention injections will roll out more widely, though funding cuts to global health programmes might slow it. Blood tests for Alzheimer's will become routine in specialist clinics. Expect at least one scare over H5N1 bird flu in mammals, and a vigorous row about whether we are prepared.
AI will be less about chatbots and more about agents that carry out tasks: booking, coding, researching, filing. The productivity question will sharpen. Either the gains start appearing in national statistics or the skeptics will gain ground. Energy demand from data centres will become a mainstream political issue, reviving interest in nuclear power, including small modular reactors.
Robotaxis will expand to more cities, including trial services in London. Humanoid robots will appear in warehouses and factories in real numbers, though not yet in homes. Quantum computing will announce error-correction milestones that impress physicists and bewilder everyone else.
In space, SpaceX's Starship should be flying more routinely, and NASA's Artemis programme will be working toward a crewed lunar landing. China's own lunar programme is on a timeline that makes a race genuinely competitive.
Birth rates will keep falling across the developed world and much of the developing world, and more governments will treat it as a crisis. It isn’t. Defence spending across Europe will keep climbing toward NATO's new targets. Cash will keep disappearing from daily life. Remote work will settle into a hybrid truce. Trust in traditional media will keep eroding while people access their news from podcasts and short videos.
Digital ID will roll out in more countries, and both Ofcom and the EU will persist in trying to snoop on what everyone says and to control what everyone reads.They won’t succeed.
Sport has the Rugby World Cup in Australia, the Cricket World Cup in southern Africa, and the Women's Football World Cup in Brazil.
The safest prediction of all is that the biggest story of 2027 will be one nobody predicted. Forecasters will then explain why it was obvious all along.
Whether you like it or not, there will be treatment to prevent male pattern baldness, life prolonging drugs and therapies, and designer babies.
Madsen Pirie